This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon.
War is afoot in House of the Dragon. After all the lead up of the first season and the violent horrors we've seen so far in the hit HBO show's sophomore entry, Episode 3 begins with a slaughter. But, in another thoughtful adaptation change, we see what leads to it. Boyish teenage stupidity and its outcome: a horrific field of thousands of bloodied and bruised dead bodies. It's a brutal beginning to an episode that finally sees the Green and Black factions head into the coming war, or at least the young, fiery, and furious men of the families. As the episode ends, we learn that there is one last hope for peace that comes in the form of a shocking twist that sees Rhaenyra (Emma D'arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) reuniting under the cover of darkness.
One of the greatest strengths of House of the Dragon has been how it has built its chamber drama style storytelling around two young women thrust into the fires of a royal war. From childhood, both Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) and Alicent (Emily Carey) have lived the lives set out for them by their fathers, the former as the first female heir to the throne of Westeros and the latter as a child bride married to King Viserys to raise her family's status in the kingdom. At one time, they were each other's confidantes and best friends.
Based on George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon ostensibly adapts fictional historical documents that are told by a number of different and potentially unreliable narrators. That puts the series in an interesting place as it essentially means that what we're seeing on screen is the "real" version of events, even when it changes the canon of the stories as we know them. The season started with an intriguing and thoughtful adaptation of two infamous characters Blood & Cheese, and with this new late stage gambit by Rhaenyra, we get insight into the new attempts to make peace that came before the violent, awful, and inevitable war.
As Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) leads a war party into the Riverlands and Rhaenyra's council pushes her to act, the only people who seem aware of the reality of what a war will do to the Seven Kingdoms are Rhaenyra and Rhaenys (Eve Best) The latter was once overlooked for the crown, but rather than becoming bitter and cruel, she instead stands as a sole voice of reason. It's she who encourages Rhaenyra to remember that Alicent was her friend; her that gets her to finally open the raven's letter that Alicent sent after Luke's death; and she who councils patience, and reminds the council that Rhaenyra wears the crown of Jaehaerys the Conciliator, implying that she may be able to find peace where only war seems to possible. It's that which inspires Rhaenyra to enlist Myseria (Sonoya Mizuno), her new Master of Whispers, to smuggle the Targaryan Queen into the Great Sept costumed as a Septa, at great risk to her own life.
It's here that we see the long awaited reunion between the two former best friends, though now Rhaenyra is holding Alicent at knifepoint. We're a long way from the pair laying with their heads in each other's laps learning the history of Westeros. It's here that Rhaenyra lays out her not very great plan, Alicent surrenders, and they end the inevitable war before it begins. It feels like there should have been more thought, maybe perhaps a compromise, but of course we already know the outcome of the war thanks to Game of Thrones, so a slightly better plan was never in the cards. Still, it’s a massive moment because it once again expands on these two women, their relationship, and how in spite of filicide, betrayal, and great trauma, they can still come together in order to try and change the fates of their families and each other.
Sadly, it seems it's far too late for Alicent to go back on the war she's started, but at least now she's aware of the truth of what Viserys said: Aegon II isn't the rightful heir, and instead he was talking about the Prince Who Was Promised prophecy rather than her son. It's a stunning moment that shows the Green and Black factions did have a chance at peace, but it was apparently all for naught as Rhaenyra struggled to convince her old friend. But it seems important that Alicent allowed Rhaenyra to escape safely instead of calling for her guards and killing her right then, so maybe there is some hope for the Seven Kingdoms after all.
It's a testament to both Cooke and D'arcy that in an episode where we get dragon eggs — perhaps the same one Daenerys was gifted in Game of Thrones — and a Dragonseed (Targaryan bastards who can ride dragons) that their meeting is the most powerful thing we see. Both their performances and the writing offer great weight and a new addition to canon that changes the tales that have been told about the war and our perception of them. In Fire & Blood, the war is something that happens to Rhaenyra and Alicent rather than them being active participants who took steps to try and stop the bloodshed. So no matter what comes next, we now know that the war wasn't as inevitable as we thought, and there was even at one point a path to peace which was crafted by a Targaryan, in spite of the violence and madness that they're notorious for.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
